How many submarines does the US Navy need? How many surface warships? How many aircraft carriers? Should they be big, small, medium? What should they do? Do we need different kinds of ships or aircraft? What sorts of formations should they deploy with — or fight with? Those are some of the issues and questions being pondered this spring and summer as the US Navy works through several interlinked efforts to reach a new understanding of where it’s headed over the next several decades. – Defense News
Instead of begging for more money — which won’t come — it’s time to face facts and use the fiscal pressure to force efficiencies and reforms, says a new report from an elite group of officers at the Army War College, the service’s school for future generals. – Breaking Defense
F-35 critics often point to the Pentagon's decision to start building the fifth-generation fighter before design and testing is complete as the root of the program's problems. Even now, as the Air Force prepares to declare its F-35A jets operational this year, so-called "concurrency" remains an obstacle. – Defense News
F-35 production is slated to hit full steam in 2019, and Lockheed Martin is reshaping its final assembly line to get ready. – Defense One
The Littoral Combat Ship program will reach several major milestones in the coming months, from conducting full ship shock trials on both hull variants, to demonstrating a new expeditionary mine mission package, to refining operational concepts, the outgoing program executive officer told USNI News in a May 2 interview. – USNI News
Physiological episodes — including hypoxia and decompression sickness from loss of cockpit air flow — , which are hard to diagnose after the fact, are a confirmed cause in at least 15 naval aviation deaths in the past two decades — and aviators are worried more pilots may die before officials fix the problems…These show a troubling rise in the number of breathing and pressurization problems, and that Navy and Marine F/A-18 Hornet and EA-18G Growler aviators view the problematic On-Board Oxygen Generation System as the fleet's most pressing safety issue 10 times over. – Military Times
US Army Special Operations has a big appetite for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and is just scratching the surface on what is possible, according to Maj. Gen. Clayton Hutmacher, its deputy commander. – Defense News
Phillip Lohaus writes: The Army is not the only part of the Defense Department that is in need of internal reform to better address contemporary threats…But given the fact that the Army is currently facing, as one author bluntly put, an identity crisis, it has the opportunity to lead the way on meaningful structural reform. Pursuing greater agility, adaptability, and ambidexterity will increase the ability of the Army to face both current and future threats, regardless of what future budgets might bring. – The National Interest
Eli Lake writes: The idea that Rhodes is somehow independent of, or in opposition to, the foreign policy establishment is delusion. He embodies that establishment, particularly when it comes to the Iran deal. – Bloomberg View
Max Boot writes: Obama and Rhodes would be better advised to look within and to ask what went wrong: Why were their high hopes, the hopes encapsulated in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, so cruelly dashed? Some of it is due to events beyond their control–but a lot was due to the mistakes they made and continue to make. The fact that the president and his top aides seem to have no awareness of those mistakes is mystifying and dismaying. – Commentary
Fred Fleitz writes: Obama will leave multiple serious international crises for his successor to deal with. To solve these crises and restore America’s global standing, it is vital that the next president abandon President Obama’s irresponsible style of managing U.S. foreign policy; the next president must hire competent advisers and trust the secretaries of State and Defense and other Senate-confirmed national-security officials to do their jobs – National Review Online